


After Adamant

by DictionaryWrites



Series: Elvhen Ascension [10]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Adamant Fortress (Dragon Age), Complicated Relationships, Desperation, Exhaustion, M/M, Power Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-24
Updated: 2019-09-24
Packaged: 2020-10-27 05:50:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20755364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites
Summary: The Inquisitor is avoiding Bull.





	After Adamant

It’s a few days after Adamant that the Iron Bull clocked it.

They’d discussed it, kinda. They’d discussed the demon, and the Iron Bull had asked Lavellan to hit him, and Lavellan had did what he always did – he asked questions, he listened. _Then_ he hit him. It wasn’t quite as satisfying, Bull didn’t think, as it would have been if he’d just hit him, but—

That’s how Lavellan was. That’s how he always was.

Always with the questions, the research, a true academic. It was infuriating, sometimes, the things he’d rattle off in a conversation: could quote a hundred history books, a thousand Dalish stories, even quote poetry, because he liked to see the nobles stutter and stumble when the knife-ear with the tats on his face weighed Brother Genitivi’s writings out loud all genteel-like, because he was familiar with them, _more_ than familiar with them, and what’s more, he was pretending he didn’t even know why they were surprised.

He’d have made a good Ben-Hassrath.

But now?

Lavellan was avoiding him.

At first, Bull had thought it was the standard. Bull was training up with the Chargers, getting them ready to go over to Adamant, take the whole thing down to the stones: he’d figured that he was maybe spending time training with one of the others, but Sera said she hadn’t seen him; Solas and Dorian hadn’t seen him since they’d come back; Varric said he’d come to discuss Hawke, then disappeared.

He wasn’t at dinner, the next night, or the next night, or lunch, or breakfast. He was taking his meals up in his room, and the first day, it was easy to believe it was paperwork that he was trying to get through, or a stack of books he was desperate to finish, in case he went off without them and got someone killed because he didn’t read the right page.

He worried about that kind of thing, did Lavellan.

Iron Bull moved slowly up the stairs to Lavellan’s quarters, on the third day. Outside of his room, there was a tray. Nothing on it had been touched. Iron Bull’s knock on the door wasn’t quiet: it was loud enough to wake him, if he’d fallen asleep in his bed, or more likely, at his desk with a book in his lap.

Bull pushed the door open when there was no answer.

He wasn’t entirely surprised to find Lavellan wasn’t up there. He had headed off the balcony, that much was clear, and he didn’t bother sweeping the place. He went straight for Cole, asked the kid where the Inquisitor was, and took direction.

\-- 

There were hot springs on the mountain. The area where the springs were had elven ruins around them: the spring came up in a stone well, carved with Dalish statuettes, and the clearing around it was green, grass growing on the ground, a canopy of thick, leafy trees overhead. The hot water bubbling to the surface balanced out the freeze of the snow, thawed it out into a tiny little glade, gorgeous, verdant.

Lavellan wasn’t even in the hot spring proper, where they bathed sometimes, where Bull gently pulled him into the water, washed his hair, dragged him tight and close… He had a candle lit in front of him, and he was murmuring to himself in quiet elvish, a chant, repetitive.

Iron Bull had never seen Lavellan pray before. He’d never seen him in a position like this, on his knees, head bowed, even in the bedroom – he never wanted to seem quite that obedient, that deferential, it was more defiant, when he was with Bull.

It was a long time that Lavellan went on for. At least an hour, maybe two – the Bull didn’t count. Maybe he should have. It felt wrong, watching him like this, curiously intimate, but he didn’t want to leave.

When Lavellan stopped, he blew out the candle. Fell back onto his arse, wrapped his arms around his knees. It was the smallest he’d ever looked, and Iron Bull felt sick just looking at him.

“You eaten?” Iron Bull asked. “Last few days?”

“I ate yesterday,” Lavellan said quietly.

“Right,” Iron Bull rumbled, and he took a step forward. “Get up. We’ll talk.”

“You hate talking,” Lavellan murmured as he got to his feet, and he was shaky, shaky enough that Bull caught him by the hip to keep him from falling, just in case. “Why don’t you just hit me instead?”

That hurt. It wasn’t fair, and Lavellan knew it wasn’t fair, because he looked ashamed when Bull looked down at him, like he wanted to crumple into dust. Bull pulled him toward the stone bench, set against the wall of the spring, always heated, always warm.

“Talk,” Bull said crisply.

“And if I don’t want to?”

“I’ll wait.”

Lavellan looked up at him. His eyes were hazel, like wood dipped in honey, so soft, and Bull resisted the urge to reach out and cup his cheek or his jaw, to touch him gently, tenderly. He didn’t need that right now – Bull could see he didn’t need that, that if Bull tried to offer it, he’d only clam up.

“Do you think I made the wrong decision?” Lavellan asked. He was looking past Bull, over his shoulder at the bare air, but Bull wasn’t going to nitpick about eye contact right now, wasn’t going to poke and prod him about shit that didn’t matter when shit that _did_ matter was here on the table. “About the Grey Wardens?”

“About inviting ‘em to join the Inquisition?” Iron Bull asked, finding himself surprised. “No. We need more numbers, and the Grey Wardens are smart, confident… They fucked it up, with Clarel, but they didn’t do that on purpose, they were tricked into it, you know that. No point in throwing them all aside. Why? You regret it?”

“Solas is…” Lavellan exhaled. “He’s furious. He thinks it opens us up to vulnerability, if they’re corrupted anew, that I’ve invited in a huge chink in our armour, and even that aside, they _did_ use blood magic, and they chose that, even if they were frightened, even if they were angry; Cole thinks the Grey Wardens are beyond proving themselves worthy again, thinks that they’re as bad as the corrupted Templars already; Cassandra, she doesn’t trust…”

Iron Bull stayed silent, listening, letting Lavellan talk. He didn’t usually doubt his decisions, once he made them – and that was _after_ something had gone wrong. Here, nothing had gone wrong, not yet: the Grey Wardens were on their side, were working alongside the Inquisition, the only problem was that _three_ people didn’t approve?

“I can’t do it,” Lavellan whispered.

“Say that again, kadan,” Iron Bull murmured, and Lavellan exhaled raggedly, staring forward into space.

“I can’t do it,” Lavellan repeated. “No matter what I do, I can’t— I can’t be responsible for all this, I’m not as _good_ a… I’m not a commander, I’m not a military leader, I'm not even good in a fight without three people backing me up, I can’t do this, I can’t do it.” He was panicking. The Bull could smell the panic on the air, but he could see the Inquisitor’s breathing speeding up, bringing in sudden, sharp breaths, inflating his lungs too much, too fast, making his own head spin, no doubt. “It wasn’t Andraste. It was never Andraste, and I told them that from the beginning, and now it was this spirit, and even though we _say_, everyone ignores it, they ignore it, and I can’t do it, I can’t, I can’t—!”

“Okay, kadan,” Bull said, and put his hand on Lavellan’s shoulder. He squeezed _hard_ to get the elf’s attention, and Lavellan met his gaze. “I’ll get the Chargers. We’ll go north to the Storm Coast, take one of the restored longships. Go north, around Rivain, and land on Par Vollen.”

Lavellan stopped. The fast breathing stopped all at once, and he stared up at Bull’s face, his mouth wide open.

“What?”

“It’ll take a few weeks,” Bull said, shrugging his shoulders. He didn’t let his expression change, didn’t let it falter. “But my guys’re good on a boat. _I’m_ good on a boat, I know the way back to Par Vollen. If we get pursued, we land in Rivain or Antiva, come in Rialto Bay, and go across to the north coast on foot. Get picked up by the Qunari either way.”

“The Qunari,” Lavellan repeated.

“Yeah,” Bull said. “Re-education for me… But they’d take the Chargers as viddathari. They’d take you. How’s that sound? No more thinking. No more _big_ choices, having to command a few hundred thousand people, no more world on your shoulders. You could be a Ben-Hassrath. Not like me, but like someone. You’d be good. The Qun’d be good for you.”

“What about the Inquisition?” Lavellan asked.

“What about it?” Bull replied, leaning back, spreading his thighs a little apart. Lavellan had gotten slowly to his feet, and Bull could see it in his face, the dawning… “Cassandra’ll have to step up to the plate, I guess, or Leliana. Good practice for being Divine. Like you said, they’d be better suited to it than you anyway. Leliana, let’s say.”

“No,” Lavellan said, shaking his head. He paced a little. “No, Leliana is… People know her too well as a spymaster, they don’t find her trustworthy. And she’s too distant from people, too _angry_, too bitter – you heard her speak about the mages, after that nightmare with Alexius, she… Even her friends find her unsettling, compared to how she was before, she keeps herself too closed off. People won’t rally behind her.”

“Cassandra, then,” Bull suggested.

“_No_,” Lavellan said. “She’s too— She’s said it herself, that she isn’t ready for a big command, she second-guesses herself too much and she’s too idealistic, she won’t compromise where compromise needs to be made, and she’s too impatient with politics. She won’t take the time to learn.”

“Cullen it is.”

“Cullen!?” Lavellan repeated, and the indignation came flying out of his mouth now, his expression furious. “Cullen is bitter and angry, and he knows he’s a risk in the command he has – as Inquisitor? No! He’s making good on the mistakes he’s made, doing his best to fix what harm he’s wrought, but he can’t be trusted as a commander, not when he’s so… No.”

“What about—”

“Stop! Stop!” Lavellan said, spreading his hands. “That’s— That’s _insane_. Leave for Par Vollen? I can’t leave everything here, I can’t just leave – how many people would I be leaving for their deaths? It isn’t about leadership of the Inquisition, not just. It’s about _Corypheus_, and I need to face him, this is _my_ responsibility, I can’t just… I can’t just abandon it.”

“No,” Bull agreed. “And, in my opinion, you can’t starve yourself and avoid me forever because you’re scared I’ll tell you to knuckle down.”

Lavellan faltered. “That isn’t…” He shook his head, his lips pressing together. “That isn’t why I…”

“So you admit it?” Bull asked, raising his eyebrows. “That you were avoiding me?”

“I was already feeling too much,” Lavellan said softly. “You were too much feeling on top of the pile.”

“What, too complex?”

“Too simple,” Lavellan said. “I love you. You’re— You’re the one thing I _don’t_ agonise over, Bull. You make it difficult to… to think. Kind of make my head go pleasantly numb, and I didn’t…”

Bull was quiet, and he put out his hand, letting Lavellan take it and lean into the palm. “Did praying help?”

“Yes, actually,” Lavellan said. “I… I’m sorry. I must have… Gods, I must have sounded so irrational, I—”

“You were panicking,” Bull said. “It happens. Don’t need to be sorry.”

Lavellan came closer, between Bull’s spread knees, and Bull cupped his backside as Lavellan touched his cheeks, pressing their noses, their foreheads, together. He was warm… He needed to eat. That was the important thing.

“Thank you,” Lavellan said. “I love you.”

“I love you too, kadan,” Bull said softly. “But you need to eat.”

“Eat what?” Lavellan asked, but Iron Bull caught his wrist before he could reach lower.

“Food for the stomach, first. Then food for the libido.”

“So stern.”

“Because you need it,” Iron Bull murmured. “I’m here for what you need.”

For a second, he thought Lavellan was going to burst into tears, but then he leaned in, kissed Bull soundly, kissed him _hard_, and Bull leaned into it, kissed him back. He could feel Lavellan _dizzy_ between his legs, uncertain on his feet, but that was okay, it was okay…

“Okay?” Bull asked.

“Okay,” Lavellan echoed softly, and Bull squeezed his ass before they moved to stand.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading! Feel free to hit up [my ask on Tumblr,](http://patricianandclerk.tumblr.com/ask) to talk about DA in general, and definitely to recommend blogs to follow! I am open for requests (for Origins, II, and Inq).


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